Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Part I, ‘‘Competition and Strategy: Core Concepts,’’ lays out the core concepts of competitive strategy for companies, ﬁrst at the level of a single industry and then for multi-business or diversiﬁed companies.

The drivers of industry competition, the ways in which companies gain and sustain competitive advantage,

and the principles of developing a distinctive strategy are at the core of competition.

A sophisticated understanding of how to be competitive in a particular business provides the foundation

on which other corporate choices are built; diversiﬁcation, for example, cannot be approached

sensibly without linking it directly to competition in individual businesses. Also, the principles in Part I

Part II, ‘‘The Competitiveness of Locations,’’ addresses the role of location in competition. As competition has spread and intensiﬁed, interest in the competitiveness of nations, states, and cities has exploded. As technology has allowed companies to become more global in their activities and as capital moves more freely across borders, many theorists claim that location diminishes in importance. The articles in Part II, however, challenge this notion. In them, I show how the prosperity of both companies and entire countries is dependent on the local environment in which competition takes place. Traditionally, the competitiveness of a region or a nation has been seen primarily as an issue for governments seeking to promote investment and job creation. The new model of competitiveness reveals unfamiliar roles for companies in shapingtheircompetitivecontext;theneedforanewtypeofrelationshipbetweenbusiness,

government,andotherlocalinstitutions;andentirely new ways of thinking about government policy. Understanding the inﬂuence of location on competition, together with the ideas in Part I, is also essential to setting global strategy for companies.

and giving by both social organizations and corporations. In a world of scarce public resources and rising

aspirations to address social needs, the need for philanthropy to deliver value is urgent. The social sector

must justify the enormous resources being devoted to giving, many of which are tax subsidized and thus

supported by all citizens. The act of giving can no longer be seen as beneﬁcial for its own sake. Instead,

giving must achieve true social impact. The corporate sector is being asked to participate in social issues as never before, often under

the banner of corporate social responsibility. How and where corporations should engage social issues,

and how they should invest their philanthropic giving, is a pressing issue for every corporate leader.

The key to doing this well is understanding that social issues and economic issues are not mutually

exclusive but can be mutually reinforcing, as highlighted in Part III. Thus,

social considerations can and should become part of a company’s strategy, not a separate agenda.

12. Philanthropy’s New Agenda: Creating Value

(New to this edition)Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer

13. The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy(New to this edition)Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer

14. Strategy and Society: The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility (New to this edition)Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer

Part V, ‘‘Strategy and Leadership,’’ recognizes that leadership is needed to achieve superior value creation.

For any organization, developing a strategy is an act of leadership, and strategy represents perhaps the most powerful tool available to leaders to get all the individuals in the organizationaligned arounda common

purposeanddirection. Ascrucial asleadershipis,westillknowsurprisinglylittleabouttheroleofleaders, especially the leaders of large complex organizations such as those that populate the Fortune 100 or Fortune 500. Such organizations are too largeandcomplexforanyleadertofullyunderstandallofthebusinesses,managethemany

thousandsofemployees,ormakeevenasmallfraction of all the decisions. In such organizations,

the roles of leaders are subtle and indirect, and we have begun to explore these roles in recent work.

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About Me

Education : Doctor of Management , Major Business
Management, Suan Dusit Rajabhat University
Certificated English for Academic and Research
Communication at ICTE,
The University of Queensland, Australia. (2006)
Certificated Program on "Strategic Management
workshop" Haas School of Business UC Berkeley
(2005)
Master of Education (Educational Evaluation &
Measurement)Chulalongkorn University